Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Charles Aldarondo and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Four cowboys inclined their bodies over the barbed-wire fencewhich marked the dividing-line between the Centipede Ranch andtheir own, staring mournfully into a summer night such as onlythe far southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung thickand low—so low that it seemed they might almost be plucked by anupstretched hand—and a silent air blew across thousands of openmiles of land lying crisp and fragrant under the velvet dark.
And as the four inclined their bodies, they inclined also theirears, after the strained manner of listeners who feel anguish atwhat they hear. A voice, shrill and human, pierced the night likea needle, then, with a wail of a tortured soul, died away amiddiscordant raspings: the voice of a phonograph. It was their own,or had been until one overconfident day, when the Flying HeartRanch had risked it as a wager in a foot-race with theneighboring Centipede, and their own man had been too slow. As ithad been their pride, it remained their disgrace. Dearly had theyloved, and dearly lost it. It meant something that looked likehonor, and though there were ten thousand thousand phonographs,in all the world there was not one that could take its place.
The sound ceased, there was an approving distant murmur of men'svoices, and then the song began:
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Lift up your voice and sing—"
Higher and higher the voice mounted until it reached again itsfirst thin, ear-splitting pitch.
"Still Bill" Stover stirred uneasily in the darkness. "Why 'n'ell don't they keep her wound up?" he complained. "Gallagher'sgot the soul of a wart-hog. It's criminal the way he massacresthat hymn."
From a rod farther down the wire fence Willie answered him, in aboy's falsetto:
"I wonder if he does it to spite me?"
"He don't know you're here," said Stover.
The other came out of the gloom, a little stoop-shouldered manwith spectacles.
"I ain't noways sure," he piped, peering up at his lanky foreman."Why do you reckon he allus lets Mrs. Melby peter out on myfavorite record? He done the same thing last night. It looks likean insult."
"It's nothing but ignorance," Stover replied. "He don't want notrouble with you. None of 'em do."
"I'd like to know for certain." The small man seemed torn bydoubt. "If I only knew he done it a-purpose, I'd git him. I bet Icould do it from here."
Stover's voice was gruff as he commanded: "Forget it! Ain't itbad enough for us fellers to hang around like this every nightwithout advertising our idiocy by a gun-play?"
"They ain't got no right to that phonograph," Willie averred,darkly.
"Oh yes, they have; they won it fair and square."
"Fair and square! Do you mean to say Humpy Joe run that foot-raceon the square?"
"I never said nothin' like that whatever. I mean we bet it, andwe lost it. Listen! There goes Carara's piece!"
Out past the corral floated the announcement in a man's metallicsyllables:
"The Baggage Coach Ahead, as sung by